


This Is Not the Fairytale AU I Should Be Writing OR A Snippit of a Little Mermaid AU That Actually Makes Sense

by Ennead13x



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, The little mermaid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:33:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ennead13x/pseuds/Ennead13x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Get a paper and pen!" was my first reaction to TLM when I was little, and from a discussion on Tumblr, it seems like that was a lot of people's thoughts. We figured, if Stiles was the Mermaid in this situation, that he'd have the same reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not the Fairytale AU I Should Be Writing OR A Snippit of a Little Mermaid AU That Actually Makes Sense

After the incident with the pipe (and the tobacco ash that has left the banquet table irreparably stained in a way that Boyd will surely smirk over for years), Derek doubts that Archduke Peter would allow their silent guest anywhere near the offices. But the boy’s pleading gestures had been insistent, and thus far he had proved unstoppable in the face of shipwreck, ravines, and a pack of overenthusiastic hounds. Derek’s curiosity -no- his worry for the safety of his castle prompted him to accompany him on his errand.

The sick obsession Laura and Joshua seem to have about seeing him fail at any courtly interaction had them tagging along. Halfway to the office, they got bored with the comfortable silence between the two young men, and began a game of guessing their guest’s name. Derek was quietly amused at the increasingly exaggerated responses each name garnered. “Malcolm?” Got Laura a disinterest snort. “Louie?” A fine-boned hand swiped across his throat. “Genim?” A shake like a wet dog. “Bob?” Josh received dead stares from all three of them.

“Rumpelstiltskin.” Derek said dryly. He’d decided if Josh got to be ridiculous, at least _he_ could be ridiculous _and_ witty about it. So what if Laura and Josh turned their judging stares on him? He was used to it. The boy, after a second’s thought, gave him a smile like a sunrise and held up his hand. It took a moment for Derek to register that those long fingers were held up in a pinched signal for ‘close’, as the prince tried to recover from an inexplicable feeling like a kick to the gut.

The boy’s expression morphed into a caricature of a squeeze as he held his hands out wide and pushed them together. At the three royals’ blank stares, he dropped his arms and spun around. Derek was sure he caught an eye-roll in there, but was distracted by the opening flourish of his uncle’s office doors. Their mysterious visitor barely paused to look around before diving straight towards the pile of blank stationary on the desk. Josh laughed cruelly as he clumsily swept up a long inkblock and tried rubbing it on a page.

Laura shot her cousin a glare and gently took the inkblock from their guest. He soon abandoned frowning at the blocky smudges it had made to watch intently as she ground a fair bit of it into the inkwell and added a dropper-full of water from the vial on the desk. Derek watched the boy watch his sister, something about his profile niggling in the recesses of his memory. To distract himself, he reached for a quill. A pale hand shot out and clamped around his wrist faster than Derek could process the movement.

When Derek looked up, the boy’s honey brown eyes were wide and frightened. Derek frowned and tried to move his hand, but the grip on his arm only tightened. Laura was quick to reassure. “It’s all right. You can write, yes? It’s a quill - a pen. You’ll need it for the ink.” She shook the inkwell a little to catch his attention, but the boy’s eyes had latched onto the prince’s face.

“It won’t hurt you.” Derek said. “ _I_ won’t hurt you.”

But the boy shook his head and Derek felt the bones of his wrist grinding a little. Even Josh was beginning to look concerned.

“It won’t hurt _me_?” Derek hazarded.

Brown eyes narrowed, as if their owner trusted Derek less with his own safety than his guest’s. He looked from Derek to Laura to the striped feather sitting innocuously in its stand. That pale throat bobbed and the red mouth twisted on what surely would have been a frustrated sound had their owner had any voice, before Derek was finally released. He waited a moment before gingerly lifting the quill.

When the only reaction was a hand run through criminally short hair and a shaky self-deprecating smile, Derek dipped the nib in the ink Laura had mixed. Ignoring his kin’s keen looks, he pressed in closer than he strictly necessary in order to write ‘See?’ in his elegant penmanship.

The boy’s eyes lit up and he grabbed for the pen. Derek let him take it, eager in his own way to see what his silent guest had to say. It took a few false starts as he attempted to adjust to holding the quill properly, ink blotching out the first words from strokes made too forcefully, feathered tip swinging too wide. Soon enough, words began to form. Derek, Laura, and Josh all leaned over the page.

In spiked, cramped handwriting - as if the writer had too many words clamoring to escape - they read, ‘ **Sorry** to flip out. This pen doesn’t look like a pen! Its stripes look like the _barb_ of a _poisonous animal_ where I’m from. But… It’s a **feather**? Cut? Right? It doesn’t _look_ like any gullfeather I-‘

The boy abruptly jerked the pen up, as if he physically had to stop the words from flowing. He hurriedly dipped the quill in the inkwell, and brought it back, dripping, to write,

‘ **STILES** ’

At their confused looks, he rolled his eyes and wrote under the block letters, ‘STY-uhls’ and underlined the former. ‘My name.’

“Stiles,” Derek said, only realizing he’s smiling when he sees the answering grins on the other three faces.

‘Si! And **you’re** the idiot who’d rather jump after his dog(???) than the little butt.’

Derek is struck dumb, although Josh and Laura are snickering, clearly not understanding the importance of what Stiles has written. Stiles gives him the crooked little smile that he last saw in the wavering light of dawn (before he coughed up a lungful of seawater and heard Boyd’s search party shouting in the distance) and writes, ‘I remembered you. Do you remember me now?’


End file.
